Traditional broadcasting has been shaken up. As consumers
embrace online streaming, broadcasters are forced to adjust to a
rapidly, and continually, changing landscape of technologies.

It’s not just consumer expectations that are shifting. There is
pressure to respond to fresh competition as barriers to enter the
entertainment production and distribution markets are lower than
ever. Broadcasters are in a tight transition position where they must
adapt in the face of new technology or risk being overshadowed by
the IP and OT T services of today and tomorrow.

The technology on which the streaming industry is built is
relatively young and in constant flux; running an OT T service
across multiple screens requires constant juggling of evolving
standards, devices, and practices. When extending your online
service infrastructure, how can you adopt new workflows to reach
your entire audience across a wide range of technologies? Below
you will find a quick guide to OT T solutions for broadcasters.

OT T services widely rely on adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming
formats to simplify distribution while providing a seamless delivery
experience for users. MPEG-DASH (along with Common Encryption)
is a great example of how the streaming industry has converged.
This delivery format enables providers to reach a large array of end
users with a single protected content file set. While MPEG-DASH
has been widely adopted for content delivery, HLS is still required
to distribute across Apple® platforms such as iOS, Safari®, and
Apple TV® with each relying on the company’s proprietary FairPlay
Streaming digital rights management (DRM) system.

Traditionally, preparing media assets for delivery was performed
on-prem by broadcasters, but cloud technology is now a viable
replacement. With swift changes in encryption, encoding, and
delivery formats, moving content processing workflows to the cloud
offers a flexible, cost-effective, and scalable alternative to investing
in on-prem hardware upgrades.

Using the flexibility of AWS, will can easily meet your capacity
requirements by managing thousands of content titles in parallel.
Video Toolkit also supports more than 100 video/audio codecs and
formats as inputs to ensure your content is compatible.

OTT services give consumers control of when to view content
along with the expectation of choosing how to watch. In addition
to TV and set-top-box playback, solutions are now also needed
for desktops and mobile devices (mainly Android™ and iOS).
Developing mobile and browser player software, however, can
be time consuming, especially as applications will need to
specifically support DRM. You can build software from scratch for
these platforms, but utilizing player software with pre-developed
features will greatly expedite the process.

Robust Playback Solutions

The castLabs DASH Every where cross-browser player ( go2sm.com/
dashevery where) and Video Player SDKs for Android and iOS (go2sm
.com/castlabssdks) make it easy to reach a wide range of consumer
screens with DRM-encrypted content. In addition to simplifying
development time, our players also boast a rich set of playback
features including:
• Support for live & VoD
• MPEG-DASH, HLS, Smooth Streaming playback
• Ad support (VAST with IMA)

Common Encryption (CENC) is an encryption standard allowing compatible DRM
systems to decrypt the same single MPEG-DASH file-set. DRM systems that can be
used with CENC include (but are not limited to): PlayReady®, Widevine™, Adobe®

Primetime, and CMLA-OMA. FairPlay Streaming, however, is not compatible.

Offline Considerations

Where consumers are able watch is also a consideration. Do your
services’ player applications support content downloading, offline
playback, and offline DRM licensing? Consumer expectations are
causing OTT services to go beyond on-the-spot streaming as some
users wish to enjoy movies and TV shows during a long trip or when
in remote areas without internet access.